


How The World Ended.

by fluidstatic



Category: Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Enthusiastic Consent, Erotica, F/M, First Time, I Will Go Down With This Ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2019-03-30 14:14:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13953327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluidstatic/pseuds/fluidstatic
Summary: Making love in her quarters is far more rewarding than either of them expected it to be.





	How The World Ended.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sissyhiyah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sissyhiyah/gifts).



Sliding polished cotton against linen, turning away from the wall toward the bed, Quistis’ lips part as she wraps her knee around Balthier’s thigh and draws him closer. His breath hitches so very slightly and his lips curve, but his eyes are dark. Her leg slides over his, and their hips brush; she sways; he folds one lean arm around her waist, tucks a wisp of hair behind her ear, and makes a small sound – steady as she goes -

She kisses him.

His mouth is even fuller than it looks, soft like a girl’s, but his jaw is firm and his kisses grow firmer to match. She absently pets the fine hair of his sideburns, warm over his temples. He closes his eyes.

Her fingernails play like witch-mist over his jaw, smooth, still humid with the suggestion of clean soap and hot water. A hopeful earnest masculine smell wafts from his throat, aftershave a little too old-fashioned for the rest of him, and his shoulders work carefully as he takes off his shirt, and now the heat of his skin is a wave against her face as she presses her cheek to the warm plane of his collarbone. He folds her against his chest with both arms and exhales a licorice-sweet breath of shy gratitude into her hair.

“Must admit - I always wanted to hold you this close,” he murmurs, his voice thick and low. “Never dreamed I’d… You’re…”

His hands finish the sentence on her body. Long fingers wander, his palms wide, slightly yellowed half-moon fingernails hissing oh so quietly over the yoke of Quistis’ blouse – he murmurs once, incoherent, short and sweet, and the distance between their bodies grows even less as the smooth rapidly warming fabric drops away from her body to the floor.

She turns the long white line of her throat to his mouth. When he tastes her pulse, tentative, the softness obliterates her; for a moment she forgets how to breathe.

“Er - your stockings?” he asks, awkwardly.

“Leave them,” she mumbles against his throat, blushing. “Wearing garters, too.”

“There is a God,” he breathes, eyes ripe with twilit mischief and disbelief, lust and adoration.

“You’re shaking,” she declares, trying to laugh.

“Nearly to my knees with terror, I’ll have you know,” he admonishes her. In a heartbeat, his smirk falls into half-darkened hunger: “But – hang it - your breasts. Let me–”

“Balthier.” Quistis feels her weight shift down and away, lowered onto the bed.

The regulation nylon bedspread scratches its threads against her skin. Horrid ecru sheets rumple away from a mattress thin from too many turnings. Balthier’s wide warm palm slides under the small of her back and his thigh, warm and solid under black linen, slides between her knees to brush against the hem of her skirt. She hikes it round her waist, letting her hands come to rest on the small of his back. The strands of her hair part in rivers between his fingers. 

“Nnn,” he says, against the curve of her neck. “You smell of Heaven.”

Quistis can’t speak. She’s forgotten how. His face is caught in water-fractured light from the rainy courtyard, and his hands rest strong and delicately veined on her hips; he sits back on his heels and skims her body with his eyes. Quistis turns at the waist slightly away from him, stretching ribs long and arms longer, posing for his consideration.

The fingers of his free hand follow the seam of her stocking to its lace edge, tracing the line of her garter to her hip. The black lace belt rests low over her belly where a bit of nonsensical pink silk clings tight to creamy taut skin (and she’s never felt so beautiful while wearing so little).

“I’d die a god if the world ended – right - here,” he murmurs, brushing a hummingbird-weighted fingertip over the swell of her belly. His lips tremble into a smile and Quistis thinks desperately of his tongue, burning a line from her navel to her -

“Have me, first,” Quistis whispers, suddenly hoarse. “We’ll die gasping.”

“We –” His eyes flash brass. Their mouths crash. He is so warm.

The underwear comes off, awkwardly, leaving the garter belt behind; his palm closes over the thatch of coppery hair revealed, and one finger slides home.

Quistis’ eyes fly open. “Hyne -”

“Too much,” Balthier murmurs, through clenched teeth. “Shit, I’ll…”

“More,” Quistis whimpers, and the sound of her own voice reminds her of starving, of poverty and house fires and desperation. Balthier moans.

“Everything,” he grates, as his mouth closes over the stiff blush of her nipple; her hips jump. He draws back from her body and his head is between her thighs, and his tongue slides to where his palm just pressed – a groan like mercury tears from them both, radiating into every atom of her like Armageddon.

But through sparks, panting, Quistis concentrates – fumbles - reaches for the condom in the nightstand. Foil crackles as Quistis tears open the packet with her teeth. Balthier sits back on his heels, mouth shining with the damp of her, and breathes an audible smile.

“Good girl. Shaking like mad,” he admits. “Will you… er.”

She obliges. He is thick and smooth - so hard, hot, oh – and she kisses the fawn-brown hair crosshatched against his abdomen. As he slides into her, the sound of her name drops from his throat in a rush of emotion against her shoulder, ragged, treacle-sweet, broken.

“Quistis. Quistis… Quistis, Quistis, Hyne-God-Hell-Lover, Oh Quistis.”

The rain patters on for years. Quistis arches, breathes. A few slow strokes, and their eyes lock.

“Balthier,” Quistis tries, but bliss closes her throat, and her eyes flood. Balthier’s own eyes shiver sympathy; he brushes hot tears from her cheekbones with a tender thumb. She can’t breathe for the sight of him.

“Ffamran,” he murmurs to her. His face is wider than the moon. “The people I …love… call me…”

Quistis’ breath cracks into sobbing. Tears track from the corners of her eyes into her hair. Balthier (Ffamran, oh Ffamran) folds her close to him, kisses her eyes and moves into her, certain and slow. Her tears dry and she throws back her head, gasping with the weight of no more – too much – so sweet – so perfect – never stop.

“Darling, lover, hush now - tears are for funerals,” Ffamran murmurs, into the hollow of her throat.

The clock ticks twice, and lust catches them again. Ffamran’s fingernails scrape hunger into Quistis’ shoulders, and her tongue swirls jacquard patterns on his neck. He throbs inside of her and she lets the animal effervescent desperate reliefof his body against hers erase her completely.

She breaks around him in a drowning rush, fingernails biting into shoulders neck arched hips wide breasts singing belly twisted fireworks bending her mind into oh god oh hyne oh yes oh no balthier please ffamran hyne yes yes -

His palms burn into the creases of her hips as he follows her into that radiant obliteration; his voice cracks from him, strangled, and his eyes turn to celandine diamonds, blind, ignited.

The world ends.

Ffamran rocks Quistis back into her body, slowly, whispering Latin, curled against her, voice breaking with emotion. She curls against his warm sweat-shining chest, and the soft rain-distorted light flickers over them both. She weeps again, and he brushes tears from his own eyelashes, meekly.

These tears are not for funerals – they’re for the coming home, and the poetry, and for each other.

Long silence filled with warm knowing dries their tears – they don’t need to speak. His arm circles her waist, but he doesn’t kiss her, and doesn’t speak; their skin is radiant enough to breathe the meaning of every word they could hope to say.

For the first time in her memory Quistis sleeps without dreams, sheltered, beautiful.


End file.
